ive operations. In that case, said Guizot, Constantinople
might be occupied by the Russians, and the British fleet enter
the Sea of Marmora; and if that happened, he could not answer for
the result in France, and he owned that he (and Thiers expressed
the same in his letter) was in the greatest alarm at all these
dangers and complications. He had seen Palmerston this morning,
and read Thiers' letter to him. I asked him if it had made any
impression on Palmerston. He said, 'Not the slightest;' that he
had said, 'Oh! Mehemet Ali cedera; il ne faut pas s'attendre
qu'il cede a la premiere sommation; mais donnez-lui quinze jours,
et il finira par ceder.' Guizot said that the failure of so many
of his predictions and expectations had not in the slightest
degree diminished Palmerston's confidence, and that there was in
fact no use whatever in speaking to him on the subject. Guizot is
evidently in great alarm, and well he may be, for there can be no
doubt that his Government are in a position of the greatest
embarrassment, far from inclined to war, the King especially
abhorring the very thoughts of it, and at the same time so far
committed that if the four allies act with any vigour and drive
Mehemet Ali to desperation, France must either kindle the flames
of war, or, after all her loud and threatening tone, succumb in a
manner not only intolerably galling to the national pride, but
which really would be very discreditable in itself.

Guizot dwelt very much upon their long-continued and earnest
efforts to make the Pasha moderate and prudent, and on the offers
he had made to join the allies, and unite the authority of France
to that of all the others for the purpose of preventing the Pasha
from advancing a step further, provided they would leave him in
his present possessions. I certainly never saw a man more
seriously or sincerely alarmed, and I think (now that it is so
near) that the French Government would avoid war at almost any
cost; but the great evil of the present state of affairs is, that
the conduct of the question has escaped out of the hands of the
Ministers and statesmen by whom it has hitherto been handled, and
henceforward must depend upon the passions or caprice of the
Pasha, and the discretion of the numerous commanders in any of
the fleets now gathered in the Mediterranean, and even upon the
thousand accidents to which, with the most prudent and moderate
instructions from home, and the best intentions in exec